The Cherokee War of 1760 is a misleading name for a war within a war. The French & Indian War, which lasted from 1754 to 1763, exasperated tensions between Native American tribes and European settlers in the frontier regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. Particularly amongst the Cherokee, these tensions were especially noticeable. Smallpox and increasing hostility with encroaching settlers ravaged the Cherokee population, and in 1758, these tensions exploded into outright war between the Cherokee and the colony of Virginia. Within a year, the Cherokees began launching raids up and down the frontier from the valleys of western Virginia to South Carolina’s backcountry.
The war formally arrived in South Carolina in 1759, but would not reach its full vigor until 1760. In 1759, colonial troops stationed at Fort Prince George in modern day Pickens County, harassed a group of local Cherokee, sparking a series of bloody reprisals. In response, a Cherokee delegation in Charleston was imprisoned. In February of 1760, Cherokees ambushed colonial troops near Fort Prince George, and several Cherokee prisoners were executed, thus truly setting off the Cherokee War of 1760.
Of particular interest to Cherokee strategists was the fort at Ninety-Six and the surrounding district, of which modern Newberry County was a part. Two largescale attacks on Ninety-Six were repulsed, but the Cherokee continued to raid into the district. In October 1760, Cherokee warriors killed several settlers along the Enoree River in present-day Newberry County. Settlers took refuge in a number of fortified homes along the Enoree, Bush and Broad Rivers, including Turner’s Fort and Brook’s Fort in Newberry County. Throughout late 1760 these forts came under frequent attack by Cherokee warriors, but each time the forts held out. These forts so thoroughly held up the Cherokee that the colonial authorities were able to reorganize and launch a counteroffensive. In May of 1760, a force of British troops marched into the Cherokee country. They were ambushed near Fort Loudoun, in present day Tennessee, but were able to regroup, and by 1761 the combined forces of colonial South Carolina and the British regulars forced the Cherokee to sign the Treaty of Charleston.
The aftermath of the Cherokee War of 1760 was dreary for both sides. The Cherokees lost much of their ancient territory in South Carolina and their population was almost halved by war and disease. For the settlers of the upcountry, especially in the Ninety-Six district, the end of the war saw economic hardships and lawlessness. For the duration of the war, crops were left unsowed or unharvested, livestock escaped or was stolen, and the roads and trails were left untended. The vacuum created by the removal of colonial and British troops enabled the rise of outlaw gangs which terrorized the countryside. This in turn led to the South Carolina Regulator movement of the late 1760s, which in turn, exasperated tensions between backcountry colonists and the coastal elites. These tensions would finally flare into outright war by the time of the American Revolution.
The story of the Cherokee War of 1760 and its importance to Newberry County is just one of the countless stories we strive to preserve at the Newberry Museum.
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